The great majority of federal legislators are lawyers. This represents an inherent conflict of interest, since lawyer-legislators have an incentive to produce complex, conflicting, and incomprehensible laws that require other lawyers to interpret and navigate.
We would make great progress in cleaning up our legal system if we implemented a requirement that no person who has practiced law within the past seven years may (1) be elected or re-elected to Congress or (2) draft or sponsor legislation.
This is crazy talk. Not every law is as simple as Green light means go, Yellow means slow down, Red means stop. Many laws have complex scenarios and cases that require lawyers with higher than high school level of education and training.
Laws are rarely about law; they’re about other things. Let experts in those other things, or (Heaven forbid) regular citizens, draft the laws. Paralegals can clean them up to be sure they’re worded right.